It wasn’t navigating rocky paths, herding hundreds of animals or the prospect of spending 14 nights in a tent that Emily Garthwaite was thinking about on her first day on the Zagros mountain range. It was where she fitted within Hossein and Jahan’s family. The British-born photojournalist, who has lived in northern Iraq since 2019, was joining the husband and wife, three of their nine children, other relatives, plus donkeys, dogs, sheep, goats and horses, for their biannual Kuch (migration). The nomad family of the Bakhtiari tribe were moving to warmer pastures for the winter months of 2020, a 250km walk. “The hardest part of the initial stages was working out how I could keep a respectful distance and still help out. Staying on the sidelines often makes people more uncomfortable.” Putting up tents, clearing away bread after meals and keeping an eye on the livestock took her focus; Garthwaite didn’t even pick up her camera for the first couple of days. This photograph was taken towards the end, under the midday sun. “I was quite weak, as the day before I’d dinged a rib falling on a rock, and we’d eaten a lot of fat from one of the sheep that had died. My body wasn’t used to it, so I was sick. Heavily boiled mint leaves, piles of sugar and black tea helped. It was a hard day, but not a bad day. I took the photo on my iPhone XR, but I wish I’d taken it on my Leica SL2, as then it could have been printed bigger.” Garthwaite bonded deeply with the family, often walking for hours in the company of Hossein, who she says “brought her in like a daughter”. Just as she invested weeks, and not a few days, in getting to know the family, she has no plans to leave the region anytime soon. “If you want to learn about a country, you can’t just fly in and out. Until you have photographed the same mountainside, olive grove or pomegranate farm in winter, spring, summer and autumn, you can’t truly say you know it,” she says.